Styrene novelties were the toy of choice during the late thirties and forties in the United States. Even World War II did not dampen the American public's love affair with these inexpensive colorful objects. The war ended but the romance continued, with all sorts of styrene plastics--candy containers, banks, party favors, holiday decorations, baby toys, stocking stuffers, partyware, and kitchen decorations. The list marches on. This fun book is about those plastic novelties that flourished at the end of the Art Deco era. Charlene Pinkerton gives collectors and dealers plenty to see, in a photo-packed book of more than 600 color prints, a price guide, and enough information on these wonderful collectibles to satisfy everyone!

Welcome to the world of McDonald's*r Pre-Happy Meal*r Toy collecting-Americana at its best! This book chronicles the colorful and nostalgic toys distributed by the McDonald's Corporation from 1955 through the creation of the Happy Meal concept in 1979. Here are detailed descriptions and over 850 color photographs of all early promotional items and premiums distributed by McDonald's, colorful stories surrounding the McDonaldland cast of characters, and a complete, chronological listing of the jingles, slogans, signs, and themes used by this prolific organization through the years. Check-off boxes and a comprehensive index are provided to help in organizing your collection, plus the authors' established numbering system is used to identify all items. You'll want to complete your McDonald's library with the Losonsky's companion volumes: McDonald's*r Happy Meal*r Toys from the Eighties, McDonald's*r Happy Meal*r Toys from the Nineties, and McDonald's*r Happy Meal*r Toys Around the World. Now join Ronald McDonald and all the McDonaldland characters on an irresistible tour of McDonald's Pre-Happy Meal toys!

Barkcloth was the textile of choice for window treatments, upholstery, and other household textiles of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. This book explores barkcloth's enduring appeal in almost 300 full-color images, demonstrating its scintillating combination of pattern, texture, and color. Lovers of vintage textiles and retro-design will relish this exploration. These vintage beauties are organized by florals, tropicals, leaves, abstracts, novelty, and conversational prints. Information about dating and identifying fabrics and manufacturers, along with tips on buying, restoring, and using these ever-popular fabrics, are invaluable for any collector or dealer.

A look at traditional Pueblo dance, illustrated with striking black and white photographs of dancers in traditional dress from the Pueblos of San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, San Juan, Jemez, Taos, Pecos, Acoma, and Tesuque. Nancy Hunter Warren took these sensitive images before the Pueblos created a ban on taking photographs of their ceremonies. Among the dances portrayed are Commanche, Deer, Buffalo and One-Horned Buffalo, Ram, Corn, and Matachine. The text is an in-depth explanation of Pueblo dancing, including discussions of the experiential, symbolic, and cyclical nature of Pueblo dances. Also explored are the continuity across the ages of Pueblo dances, changes over time, and the meaning of these powerful expressions. A rare look at Pueblo customs in New Mexico, this book will be a treasured resource for all who are fascinated with Native American history and customs.

This one-of-a-kind book describes some 1400 different glass cutters collected from around the world by the author during the past 35 years. A brief history of flat window glass describes its manufacture, application, taxation, etc. from the time of the Romans, through France and England to the United States. The early use of flint tools and grozing yrnes for cutting and shaping the glass is noted. These tools were used for shaping the stained glass in the early cathedrals. Five hundred U.S. glass cutter patents and 28 U.S. glass cutter design patents beginning in 1860 through 2009 are listed by date, inventor, and title. A list of corporate, product line, distributor, etc. names are also described further as being in one or more of the 23 "Style Categories" the author has set up that show pictures of 600 cutters and detailed descriptions of all 1400 different glass cutters. An extensive bibliography is included.

Includes overlay and suspension lamps, lanterns, smoke shades and bells, and gas and electric lighting devices.

Gold has always inspired great fascination among mankind as proven by the golden treasures of ancient Egypt and the Inca Empire. This lavishly illustrated work begins with a cultural outline of the sacred and worldly significance of gold. It features the history of gold crafting and demonstrates the most important techniques of gilding. The technical details of the gilder's art are shown in hundreds of detailed studio photographs. Gilded objects include antique-inspired mirror frames and a multitude of modern objects. This book introduces the practical use of costly gold materials and opens one's eyes to the significance of gilded objects, past and present. It welcomes artists to explore gilding as a technique and invites everyone to appreciate the mysteries of gold.

Sit back, light up, and enjoy. Newly in vogue, people are rediscovering a relaxing pastime enjoyed for centuries. This book is a compendium of cigar related "stuff," from the old cigars in their original wrappers still ready to smoke to the fine humidors that have kept them fresh for decades. Here is the breadth of advertising, ashtrays, matchsafes, cigar boxes, dispensers, and holders that have adorned homes and shops for 100 years and more. This book follows the successful Antique Cigar Cutters and Lighters by the same co-authors, who herein present more than 500 items in clear, full-color photographs, with informative captions and a current price guide. This book is custom designed for cigar aficionados and those who appreciate antique advertising. It is a welcome addition to the literature of tobacciana.

Anchor-Hocking Glass Company's popular Fire-King (R) dinnerware and cookware were part of nearly every American home from the 1940s to the 1970s. Over 2000 pieces of this highly collectible household glassware are illustrated in color, and current prices are given. Included are the popular Jadite and opaque blue lines, as well as the eagerly collected ivory, fired-on colors, and transparent lines. This book contains numerous rarities, never before shown, as well as common Fire-King (R) that has been part of everyday life for over 50 years. The pieces are beautifully photographed and each has a careful description. This colorful new book is an important edition to the Fire-King literature, and will be cherished by collectors everywhere.

Established in 1880 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Rookwood Pottery remained a leader in the ceramic art pottery movement through 1967. Illustrated with over 800 beautiful color photographs of vases, urns, candlesticks, and plates, the book includes stunning examples of hand-painted decoration (many depicting the natural world) by well-known masters, including Albert R. and Anna Marie Valentien, Matt Daly, William Hentschel, Kate C. Matchette, Mary Nourse, and Kataro Shirayamadani. The text provides a history of the company, a survey of artist signed pieces from 1880-1930, a detailed bibliography, and an index. All who are fascinated by the ceramic arts will want to own this book.

Vintage carved Bakelite jewelry, from the great style era of the 1930s and 1940s, remains a highly sought-after category of collectible interest worldwide. From ever-popular bangles and hinged bracelets, to pins, dress clips, buckles, pendants, and earrings, these little works of art are endlessly satisfying. The great carved pieces are hard to find, valuable, and much coveted. An eye-popping array of over 1,000 vintage jewelry items in carved Bakelite is explored. Organized to highlight their many patterns and brilliant colors, these little gems of fashion are displayed in over 300 detailed color photographs. This jewel box of a book honors the art and painstaking craft of carving Bakelite into fun and interesting personal adornments. Admire it, collect it, and enjoy it!

Enjoy an incredible collection of 128 images showing the fleeting, effervescent beauty of young geisha apprentices captured over a century ago. This keepsake, fan-shaped book captures a moment now lost to history, when Japanese girls were indentured as young as 6. Dressed like dolls, they were paraded through parties and celebrated for their beauty, charm, and innocence, all the while learning the music, dance, conversational, and gaming skills expected in a master of their craft. Here is a wonderful opportunity to see these girls in the glory of their colorful regalia, posing before a newly introduced invention, the camera. This treasury of hand-tinted postcard and real-photo images is a unique book you will treasure forever.

The Salem Witch trials were one of the darkest chapters in American history. With absorbing historical narrative and 300 photographs, Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell recounts three hundred years of a city's past, from the trials themselves through the 1890s, when Daniel Low produced the first souvenir spoon, to years of memorabilia and collectibles. The historic sites in Salem are documented through their many changes. These tourist meccas are visited by tens of thousands of people each year, whose purchases have helped to create a photo album of printed images and a treasure trove of silver and china souvenirs showing both witches and the historic sites. Separate chapters in this book illustrate the witchcraft theme as depicted on jewelry, silverware, cups and saucers, assorted chinaware, bottled goods, and a host of other interesting items.

Enjoy this collection of more than 300 vintage hand-tinted and black and white postcards from the 1900s to the 1960s, many dating to the 1940s, when a visiting author declared Pittsburgh "America's Gibraltar." Take a nostalgic tour in imagery and text of the city on the three rivers back when it was famous for its steel production and was known by all as the "Steel City." Admire its skyscrapers, churches, the arcade building, Union Station, and Mercy Hospital. Meander along downtown's busy Fifth Avenue and climb the mountains Pittsburgh is nestled amongst on the city's astonishing cliff-climbing public transports known as the "inclines." Finally, idle away a relaxing afternoon at Forbes Field, Pitt Stadium, Highland Park, the zoo, Nixon Theatre, or bathing at Lake Elizabeth.

Unpacking the Personal Library: The Public and Private Life of Books is an edited collection of essays that ponders the cultural meaning and significance of private book collections in relation to public libraries. Contributors explore libraries at particular moments in their history across a wide range of cases, and includes Alberto Manguel's account of the Library of Alexandria as well as chapters on library collecting in the middle ages, the libraries of prime ministers and foreign embassies, protest libraries and the slow transformation of university libraries, and the stories of the personal libraries of Virginia Woolf, Robert Duncan, Sheila Watson, Al Purdy and others. The book shows how the history of the library is really a history of collection, consolidation, migration, dispersal, and integration, where each story negotiates private and public spaces. Unpacking the Personal Library builds on and interrogates theories and approaches from library and archive studies, the history of the book, reading, authorship and publishing. Collectively, the chapters articulate a critical poetics of the personal library within its extended social, aesthetic and cultural contexts.

Analysis of a group of images of kingship and queenship from Anglo-Saxon England explores the implications of their focus on books, authorship and learning. Between the reign of Alfred in the late ninth century and the arrival of the Normans in 1066, a unique set of images of kingship and queenship was developed in Anglo-Saxon England, images of leadership that centred on books, authorship and learning rather than thrones, sword and sceptres. Focusing on the cultural and historical contexts in which these images were produced, this book explores the reasons for their development, and their meaning and functionwithin both England and early medieval Europe. It explains how and why they differ from their Byzantine and Continental counterparts, and what they reveal about Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards history and gender, as well as the qualities that were thought to constitute a good ruler. It is argued that this series of portraits, never before studied as a corpus, creates a visual genealogy equivalent to the textual genealogies and regnal lists that are so mucha feature of late Anglo-Saxon culture. As such they are an important part of the way in which the kings and queens of early medieval England created both their history and their kingdom. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professorof Art History at the University of Leeds.

These paper cut-outs developed from toys into a historically important reflection on the German military and social classes from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, culminating in their proliferation during the rise and reign of the Third Reich. They make it possible to take a tour through German military and political history, from the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 right up to the Maginot Line in 1940. These German paper soldiers, or papiersoldaten zum ausschneiden are, without a doubt, unique visual images that, nowadays, are similar to archeological artifacts, which are very hard to find on the market. Even today, the number of preserved or catalogued images in German museums is very small, so this book, showing thousands of figures in 173 color images, is a an essential collection.

Originally written in 1905, this volume examines the coins of Japan, especially appealing because of a subtle and impersonal charm which pervades their inscriptions and the sentiments which they set forth. They are written in characters which are a manifest surviva of the picture writing of early man. He wrote, that is to say, scored or scratched, various outline sketches of his doings and the more intimate facts of his surroundings, on bone, clay or other material.

Figural shoes are a delightful, long-collected art form, which especially flourished in Victorian times and after World War II. This ground-breaking book, the first authoritative work on shoes made of porcelain and pottery, illustrates over 1,200 from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are accompanied by hundreds of marks and carefully drawn scale sketches showing in-mold detail and relative dimensions. Identified manufacturers include Royal Worcester, Coalport, Spode, Meissen, Goss, Heubach, Conta & Boehme, von Schierholz, Dedham, Morimura (Nippon), Schafer & Vater, and the most comprehensive group of Royal Bayreuth shoes ever published. There is also a large section on French faience from such factories as Henriot, the elusive Alcide Chaumeil, Moreau, Porquier, Verlingue, Longwy, and the several Fourmaintraux families. In addition, most of the unmarked porcelain shoes have been traced to German factories, many revealed here for the first time. Current values are included for all. The extensively researched text includes an alphabetical list of manufacturers, designers, decorators, and importers, with locations, years of operations, and product lines. Simplified, practical explanations on manufacturing processes are included, as are pointers for identifying and dating unmarked shoes, recognizing fakes, and assessing values. Shoe and figural collectors and all who appreciate fine porcelain and pottery will find this an essential reference and a visual delight.

Ice skating has a rich heritage with traditions spanning the centuries and the globe. Here is a concise history of skating, from the first bone skates to the early 1900s, and a guide to antique ice skates for collectors and historians alike. It will enable the reader to identify the various skate types, styles, designs, approximate ages, countries of origin, and rarity. More than 250 photographs, lavishly illustrated artwork, and original patent designs present skates from countries such as Holland, England, Germany, and America. A chapter on skaters' lanterns is also included. A general price guide will aid in evaluating a collection. This book will pique the interests of collectors and dealers in several fields, including antique ice skates, lanterns, miniatures, and tools. It will also be welcomed by wood and metal workers, carvers, and hockey, figure, and speed skating fans alike. All and all it is a delightful book.

This new study presents striking parallels in both ethnic (non-European) and folk (European) traditional costumes and ornaments made with silver and glass. African ornaments include Zulu beads, Maghreb necklaces, the Oba's crown, and Massai headpieces. European ornaments extend from the Baltic to the Alps and from Russia, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Asian jewelry comes from the Fertile Crescent, the Silk Route, and the foothills of the Himalaya. Each example exquisitely displays a common sense of beauty among many distant peoples.